


To the Boy Who Called Yesterday

by Shirokokuro



Series: If That Happens, I'll Catch You [14]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Batdad, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce is 40 going on 90, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, De-Aged, De-Aged Tim Drake, Everyone is tired, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Neglect, Magic, Tim is 17 going on...6...apparently, bruce's pov, minimal plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 06:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20719733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shirokokuro/pseuds/Shirokokuro
Summary: Bruce wonders when six-year-old Tim changed, when he shed that sad look he’s wearing now.Or, perhaps, when he got so good at hiding it.





	To the Boy Who Called Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's taken me so long to update this series! I've been in an awful writing rut lately and am still struggling to get back into the groove. Figured that you can't get more father-son inspired than a de-aged fic, though, so here we are! ^-^ 
> 
> Hope you all have been having yourselves a wonderful September! <3

“_Just give him time. That’s all we can do._”

The words aren’t what Bruce wanted to hear. They’re certainly not the worst thing in the world, but for whatever reason, letting this drag out is unsettling in a way he can’t pin down. Bruce doesn’t shift, though; he remains leaned over the keyboard in the Cave, fingers steepled and expression tired. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“_Hard to say exactly_,” Zatanna answers through the speaker. There’s no video to supplement the noise, and it leaves Bruce visibly isolated. “_The magic isn’t too complex from what you’ve described, but it’s the simplest kinds that are hardest to break. The trickier the spell, the easier it is to find a weakness—as much as it’s a mess to unravel. But this? It’s charm magic. Basic._”

“Difficult to exploit.”

“_Exactly_,” Zatanna affirms. “_Trying to force it now could do more harm than good. That’s not to say all hope is lost, though. Time is the universal solvent when it comes to indirect magic. If I had to put forward a guess, I’d give it until morning for it to wear off._”

Bruce closes his eyes resignedly. Again, not the worst. Still not what he wanted. “Is there anything I can do in the meantime?”

Zatanna’s mouth crinkles in an audible smile. “_Trust me: You’d best leave my world to me for now. The last thing Gotham needs is both you _and_ Robin out of commission. Besides, I imagine you’re needed right where you are._”

Bruce drones in dry agreement. “...Keep me posted on what you find.”

“_Certainly. Get some rest._”

The speaker clicks off, and Bruce leans back in his chair. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he can almost feel the dark circles under his eyes, the skein of his muscles overspent and sore. The overhead lights are so bright that they hurt to look at. 

After a few moments, Bruce decides that rest isn’t such a bad idea, so he pushes himself up from his chair. 

The clock in the study closes behind him a minute later.

Right now, the Manor feels jarringly empty. Skeletal and bare. The truss above the hallway hovers some twenty feet up; the paintings on the walls gaze after him with the soft glow of oil-painted faces in the dark; and the air is settled to the point where Bruce can feel himself shifting dust with each step. Alfred turned in an hour ago now, Tim even earlier than that. Bruce has the same goal in mind as he lumbers across the foyer landing to where his room is. That’s when his ears prick. 

The loaded spring of a knob turning. 

A door exhaling relief as it sways open.

Bruce glances down the stair balustrade in blank curiosity (The sound’s not threatening, he knows.), tracing row upon row of bread-crumb spindles that lead to the opened front entrance. A figure is standing there above the threshold. It’s only visible because the night outside is a modicum brighter, the faint light spilling in around the silhouette in washed-out greys. Its back is to him.

Bruce watches silently, but the figure doesn’t move, waits too, its tiny fingers clutching the doorknob while looking out into the rain. The storm’s been going for a few hours now, drizzles of Christmas light drops that stream off the eaves in a curtain that’s more sound than shape. It’s too dark to make out much, but Bruce can read the hesitancy and longing in the figure anyway. The vulnerability is why Bruce stays back for as long as he does, simply watching and waiting. 

And yet, despite Bruce’s own reservations, the stairway slowly disappears behind him, his legs working of their own accord, until he’s reached the doorway himself. Bruce is still too unpracticed to know what to do now, so he bends a knee to be eye-level with the person next to him and looks out into the storm as well. There’s a thread of mystery in the weather, cool and dense. A mist of raindrops grace the exposed skin of their faces and hold the silence.

“I thought you were in bed,” Bruce says eventually. 

The boy beside him doesn’t look his way, instead parsing the shadowed trees past the drive. Their leaves chase the storm ceiling like the surf does the sand.

“Not sleepy,” the six-year-old answers. His voice is different from the one Bruce remembers, markedly so, but is still warm in its odd familiarity. Bruce only wishes the boy remembered him as well. This version of Tim is a time capsule in human form, though, six years of memories and experiences back from the past for just one night.

None of those memories—none of that _ life— _involves Bruce; to Tim, they’re hardly more than strangers.

The rain steals a moment before the child opens his mouth again, words small but effortless. “...Why can’t I go home?”

The home in question is nearby still. Ten, fifteen minutes on foot. The building might be visible in the neighboring yard if they only look hard enough. Maybe just. But then again, maybe not.

“Is that where you were heading?”

Slowly, the boy nods. It’s obvious that he’s looking past the front gates like he’s starving for it, but Bruce already knows he won’t find anything out there.

“You can’t, Tim. There’s no one there to look after you right now. You’d be alone.” 

It’s not until then that Tim looks at him, eyes holding on to some light that shouldn’t exist out here in the dark but does. “Does it matter?”

Bruce doesn’t know how to answer that. He might have, in any other circumstance, but it throws him now because he’s caught up in the fact this is still Tim, more somber and solemn and young. But undeniably him.

It’s just that… It’s so opposite to the seventeen-year-old from yesterday. That Tim likes loud music and fast cars and grins with teeth that have the charm all things do when they’re humanly imperfect. Bruce wonders when six-year-old Tim changed, when he shed that sad look he’s wearing now.

Or, perhaps, when he got so good at hiding it.

“Come here,” Bruce beckons softly, and Tim complies, eyes quiet and trusting. The boy doesn’t complain when Bruce picks him up, simply surveys him in that calm way children do when they’ve been held by too many strangers. It’s another thing Bruce wants to address, wants to fix, but he knows a few hours isn’t nearly long enough. Instead, he settles for arranging Tim so that he’s sitting in the niche of one of his elbows and closes the front door.

“How long will I be here?” Tim asks while they ascend the stairs.

“Just for the night. Not too long.”

Bruce notes that Tim doesn’t seem happy or disappointed at that, face as difficult to read as it has been all night. The boy merely wreathes his arms tighter around Bruce’s neck, just a fraction, and looks up at the high ceiling like they’re in the Vatican. “Who’s picking me up tomorrow?”

Bruce masks his wince well, but it doesn’t mean the question is easy. Answering is a catch-22: to say a name is to lie; to say no one is to add unnecessary hurt. But, worst of all, is to say nothing at all. 

“Your father,” Bruce chooses in the end, and he can tell he has Tim’s attention in an instant. It’s a lucky thing they’ve reached the room Bruce wants, because it allows the man to turn his face away as he opens the door. 

The lamp on the nightstand is quickly switched on to reveal this room isn’t Tim’s. Or, not the one Bruce knows as Tim’s, anyway. It’s just a guest room that’s void of personality: simple sheers, simple bedframe, simple armchair in the corner. No one uses the room much. Over the years, it’s morphed into a shrine for that one block quilt bedspread from the 60s that Alfred’s determined to keep alive. The quilt itself remains kicked to the end of the bed from where Tim left it last. The sheets are still warm when Bruce sets him down.

“Will he really be here?” Tim asks, hopeful, as he stuffs his legs under the blankets Bruce pulls up for him.

The man stalls, hesitancy sparking over his face for the briefest of moments. “Your father?” Bruce tries anyway, hoping beyond hope that Tim doesn’t verify the guess. To his dismay, the six-year-old nods. “Yeah. ...Yeah. He’ll be here.”

“Promise?”

Another second of hesitation passes. Bruce is too far down the path to turn back now, so he forces himself onward despite instinct and conscience. “I promise. Just...go to sleep. Tomorrow will come quicker that way.” 

It hurts to see that Tim smiles at that. There’s a glimpse of the teenager Bruce knows, the bright flash of it blinding. “Mom says the same thing.”

“What about?”

Tim nuzzles deeper into the pillows, a light smile still in place. “She says sleep’s like time travel. Just close your eyes and you’re in tomorrow.”

“Wise words,” Bruce murmurs, feeling guilty about..._ everything _ surrounding this scenario. But at the end of the day, he knows the sooner Tim goes to sleep, the sooner the boy can move on. Yet, in the same vein, Bruce almost wants to talk with Tim more. He wants to know this version of him by heart because a part of Bruce thinks it will give him a clue to understanding Tim as Bruce knew him yesterday—and will know him tomorrow. 

It’s obvious, however, that a conversation isn’t in the cards for tonight: The six-year-old’s quickly dropping off, eyelids heavy and shoulders lax. It’s doubtful that the boy will wake up having remembered any of this at all.

Bruce settles for patting the back of his hand and hoping for the best. “Goodnight, Tim.”

Tim yawns sweetly in reply (“Goodnight, Mr. Wayne.”), and within a matter of seconds, the boy’s fast asleep.

* * *

Bruce is definitely starting to feel his age. Twenty years of crime fighting hasn’t been good to him, and his lumbar reasserts that truth when he wakes up feeling like he’s been hit by a city bus. Every other part of him doesn’t feel much better, but at the very least, his vision works well enough to tell him he didn’t leave the guest room last night; evidently, he fell asleep in the armchair. 

Typical.

Regardless, Bruce is still a bit surprised to see the signs of daybreak, distant bird song and post-storm sunlight slipping through the sheers. The morning glow competes with the lamp that Bruce must’ve forgotten to turn off. (Again, typical.) The synthetic and authentic lights clash, but other than that, the Manor has remained tranquilly still. 

Tim has too.

Bruce holds his breath as he analyzes the form, measuring height and weight and age. The boy’s face is to him, eyes closed and breaths steady, and he has all the common tells of Tim Drake-Wayne: a teen’s jawline, hair that’s as long as it is unruly, and a few scars that chip the skin of his cheek. 

He looks seventeen.

He looks like the Tim Bruce knows.

Bruce exhales at the image, soaking it in for a while with a mixture of relief and regret, before rolling himself up to a stand. He’ll head to bed in his own room, he thinks. Just has to turn out the light before leaving.

It takes him a bit to find the switch beneath the lamp shade, to the point Bruce has to kneel down in order to search underneath it. The moment the switch turns off, however, is the moment he feels eyes on him. 

Bruce turns his head to find Tim awake. 

The teen has the passive air of someone who’s been up for a while—maybe before Bruce woke up, even—with pupils that seem well-adjusted and composed, and it rings a line of recognition in Bruce’s brain. The fact Tim hasn’t said anything yet speaks volumes.

Tim’s expression stays flat, poignant. There’s an undercurrent of conversation transpiring between them, and Bruce only registers the half of it, the distant heartache and years of disappointment emanating that he wouldn’t have caught if he hadn’t seen them in the face of a six-year-old only hours ago. It’s enough for Bruce to understand that the events of yesterday weren’t forgotten. Not by himself. Not by Tim, either.

Tim’s still studying him pensively. Bruce wonders what’s going on in that head of his, if he’s missing his father or resenting the fact he honestly thought he had a chance of seeing him again. Bruce suspects it must be a bit of both, and the man hates that he didn’t have much choice but to lie to him. 

Then again, Bruce didn’t really lie. 

He has a feeling Tim knows it, too.

“...Hey,” Bruce greets dolefully, an olive branch in a word, and the syllable breaks the darkness of the moment. It’s obvious Tim still hurts, the pain of things so deep that they’re a part of who he is anymore. But then, there are instants like right now, when Tim’s face melts into a pained smile, bittersweet but warm, and it feels like things are getting better rather than getting worse.

“Hey, Dad.”


End file.
